Why Merritt Bakery matters: An appreciation

You’re an Oaklander, and once again you are trying to explain to an outsider that the city really isn’t the horrible s***hole you see in the news. This conversation partner’s eyes are starting to glaze over — maybe you’re not explaining yourself well enough, or maybe he just doesn’t want to listen? This is the point where I stop talking and send the unconverted to the Grand Lake Theatre, followed by a slice of pie at 203 E. 18th Street.

“Just go to Merritt Bakery. Oakland is Merritt Bakery.”

Merritt Restaurant and Bakery was gutted by fire yesterday, as my early-rising colleague Will Kane reported. It didn’t burn to the ground, but the blaze was the equivalent of your 96-year-old great-grandmother breaking her hip during a bad fall. The place was already in financial straits, receiving help from the city just to stay open. I want her to dance the foxtrot again, but realistically …

Oakland is fueled by hard work and optimism, and I hope to be dining on a Spanish omelette while seated on duct tape-patched vinyl chairs by Thanksgiving. In case that doesn’t happen, let me tell you why we lost a little chunk of our soul yesterday morning around 2:45 a.m.

There are many places in Oakland, and the Bay Area as a whole, that offer a sense of time travel. Children’s Fairyland is spiritually grounded somewhere between 1950 and 1954. To see Rod Dibble at the piano is to flash back to a time when rock and roll wasn’t part of the equation yet. (At least until that one newcomer to The Alley requests “Piano Man” — and gets shouted down by regulars before Rod can answer.)

But Merritt Bakery has always been my favorite local time warp. Art is created in the place, but it’s drenched in sincerity. In a region glutted with expressionists, Merritt was a culinary Norman Rockwell, selling cakes shaped like french fry containers and Santa Claus cupcakes that are so literal that they invite mocking. And maybe you do buy that first one ironically, before realizing that the world is a better place for having a hamburger cake the size of an SUV tire — still bringing joy to a younger generation that doesn’t yet know how to ridicule things that are different or dated.

I love watching my kids in Merritt Bakery. It’s like watching them inhabit my own childhood. They dart back and forth between the tiered cake display carousel, glow under the cheek-pinching Vera-from-Mel’s Diner throwback wait staff and marvel at the size of the breakfast portions. They don’t even think to ask for my iPhone — it would be like asking your dad to play Angry Birds in 1973.

Oakland is a diverse and welcoming place, where you can walk inside most businesses without worrying if you belong there. But in that regard, Merritt Bakery always cast the widest net. Decent diner food and excellent baked goods, with a complete lack of pretentiousness.

Merritt felt inviting to the old and the young, working class and white collar, engineers and artists. There were people with no dental plan and a pension, clearly stretching their fixed income for the single luxury of the daily trip to the diner. Merritt Bakery was also a muse for the movie “Up” — Pixar producer Jonas Rivera told me about many late nights with director Pete Docter at the Merritt counter, eating cake and plotting their next move. (The “Up” crew celebrated with many hamburger cakes — and placed a hamburger cake badge on Russell’s sash in honor of the restaurant.)

And now it might be gone?

Like I said, hard work and optimism. The Kwik-Way came back from worse. The Merritt Bakery cake carousels weren’t destroyed — and neither was that Truman-era machine that bound each pastry box with twine. The beams and smoke-damaged walls can be replaced. The charm and personality were fireproof to begin with.

Rise again, Merritt Bakery. And if you cannot rise again, know that you are loved, and will not be forgotten.

PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder/editor of The Big Event. He lives in Oakland. His favorite order at Merritt Bakery is the Spanish omelette with a side of bacon and black coffee. When they mistakenly bring him a spinich omelette, he never sends it back. Contact him at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com. Follow him on Twitter @PeterHartlaub. Follow The Big Event on Facebook.